Making and selling hand poured candles isn’t the most obvious product to come from a farm. Being a crofter often means thinking outside the box to add income streams to aid sustainability.
When I first discovered the concept of tallow candles online, I was chatting to a fellow Mollies breeder who had started making candles and told me it wasn’t too hard. (Thanks Moyletra Mollies.)
It fitted well into my nose-to-tail ethos, allowing me to take something that would otherwise be wasted and turn it into something beautiful.
I’ve enjoyed the fact that this is so different to the other croft activities we do. There has been a lot of trial and error along the way but that’s part of the fun. Such as experimenting with scents to ensure they are strong enough to cover the faint beef aroma (we are burning fat not wax after all.)
My top 3 lessons from the processing of each batch have been:
1. Get the butcher to mince the fat in future, chopping 8kg by hand gives you blisters.
2. A slow cooker does not get hot enough to melt the fat, get the proper kit.
3. Perhaps my biggest whoopsie- Don’t walk away from the wax melter and let the fat pur in unattended, in case you’ve left the tap open.
Beef tallow is awful stuff to wipe up, luckily, I only lost ½ a candle's worth.
As with most things, there are safety standards to follow, but they weren’t bad and it means I got to enjoy one candle per batch myself, which I probably wouldn’t have otherwise.
I’ve been blown away by how, what started as a “we’ll see how it goes idea has turned out to be so popular that each batch has sold out in minutes. I am very grateful for the support of my customers and I look forward to finding new scents that work with the tallow so that I can bring you candles throughout the year.
The candles have also been a nice example of how farming can reach a wider range of people.
If you’d like to receive further news of future candle batches, as well as what’s going on at My Wee Croft, then join my mailing list.